One working mama learning to run & to maintain my 100+ pound weight loss!

Weekly WrapUp: Week one of training done!

by littlemoreeachday on July 6, 2014

Today wraps up week one of my new half marathon training plan and it was a great start! It is kind of interesting because this first week of training and yet I didn’t get to this kind of mileage until week 8 last time. Hopefully this will all pay off with a nice shiny new PR in the fall.

Weekly Workouts

Monday 3 mile run with 4 30 second pickups on the schedule: I think I may have done 5 pick ups rather than 4. I need to come up with some way to help me keep track as this feature is part of one run each week most of the weeks! I started this run with a 5 minute walk and cool down. I know I should always do a warm up and cool down and yet I’m bad about skipping them to “save time”. Honestly, it was a lot more comfortable to start running having walked a little first so I think I will try to keep this habit for these early morning runs. Easing into things a bit seems wise.

Monday evening, I worked through the strength training routine recommended for this month. It will change each month, but this month was a series of moves (squats with shoulder press, push ups, fire hydrant leg lifts, bridges, clockwork lunges, side lifts, ab work) for 60 seconds each with 30 seconds recovery/transition between them. I had my hubby join me as my timer and he laughed at me awkwardly doing these moves (until he tried them himself and got snapped by the resistance band – ha!). I’m definitely out of practice for this kind of thing, but hopefully it will get smoother as I go along.

Resistance bands hurt when they snap back on you!

Tuesday 4-5 miles easy run: With a warm up and cool down walk, I ended up covering 4.57 miles total and thanks to the gorgeous weather, it really did feel fun and easy. The morning humidity finally broke and there was a great, cool breeze. It felt good to get something other than my usual 3 miles in before work.

Wednesday Speed work with 10 minute warm up, 6 hard intervals – 30 seconds each, with 60 seconds recovery between and 10 minutes cool down: Thanks to a late work day, I ended up tackling this at the gym at 9 pm but I think doing speedwork on the treadmill is probably the way to go for me because it keeps me at a harder pace rather than just going by “feel” on the street. I warmed up/cooled down at 5 mph and used that as my recovery pace as well. For the hard intervals, I did 7 mph for the first two, 7.5 mph for the 3rd and 4th and 8 mph for the last two. Hopefully I’ll be able to ratchet up my fast pace over time.

Thursday Cross train or rest: With our trip out to Seward NE for the Fourth of July festival, I didn’t squeeze in any time for cross training.

Friday 6 mile long run: On the training plan, this is set for Saturday but I took the opportunity to do a 10K for my birthday as my long run for the week. I’ll have a full report tomorrow, but finished my 6.2 miles in 1:06:45 which is a new PR by a whopping 15 seconds. As the middle third of that race was on a loose gravel road, I’m still happy with my performance and it was a great way to start my birthday!

Gorgeous run through the country side

Saturday Rest day: It was so hard to truly rest on Saturday, but in the spirit of honoring the schedule, which has rest days after the long run each week. I will respect the rest day. I may have to repeat that over and over (and really, who knew I’d ever have a hard time NOT exercising on a lazy, rainy Saturday?).

Sunday 3 mile run or cross training: Like I said in my goals for this half marathon training plan, I’ll try to honor my body and how I feel rather than feeling like I absolutely must run every time the schedule has it as an option. That being said, it’d be criminal not to take advantage of the unseasonably cool and lovely July weather to get out and run today. 🙂 We’ll see how the day goes. I also have another round of strength straining to get in.

I’m on call this week, so I’ll run whenever or however I can but I don’t have any specific “must do” runs for the weekdays. Hopefully, I’ll get some runs in and I should still be able to do the strength routines as I could do that in my office if I’m stuck at work forever. 🙂 I’m traveling to Montana next Saturday and will hopefully get there in time for a nice long run Saturday. I have some new running gear in my stash of birthday gifts that I’m looking forward to trying out!

Oh, and in terms of the new eating plan, I’m still liking the Simply Filling plan and even navigated the fair food at the Fourth of July Festival, all with exactly 0 change in the scale. I’m happy with that, as I’ve definitely had a couple of times this week where I was uncomfortably full from misjudging my portion sizes. This will definitely be a learning process this month. 🙂

2 responses to “Weekly WrapUp: Week one of training done!”

Great job this week! I know rest days are mentally tough, and that is why I think doing yoga on rest days is a good idea. It helps mentally since you are doing something and also helps with recovery after a long run!